THIEF
the Dark Project
Mafia

Oh yes, that is something to consider.

I don't really mind that you made up flavor for the blockers.

You might not care, but I felt a bit cheated!

Also: I kinda knew Leif was scum from the very beginning T'was only when i replaced MK that it was confirmed.

You might not care, but I felt a bit cheated!

Maybe so, but the most damning thing against you was your unintentional misinformation which made you look like a liar.

Technically I was right. You weren't telling the truth.

HIDDEN MECHANISMS

Keeper Artemus:

*If he had recruited Garrett, this one would have become Town instead of Survivor, meaning he could win even if he died and appeared Innocent on investigations, but only if the Town won.

*If he had recruited Archmage Kreos, his recuitment would have failed, but he would have learnt he didn't win with the Town nor the Downwinders, and thus could realize he was third party.

*If he had recruited Captain Pearsall, he would have made him lose his naivety.

Hal & Joss:

If they both targeted the same player, here is what could happen:
*Whatever the target's alignment: Joss had only 25% chance of letting the target being robbed (instead of 50%) and couldn't accidentally roleblock the target because of this malus.

*If the target was Town: their protection worked as a protection from two consecutive kills on the target.

*If the target was Mafioso/Pagan, they had 25% chance of:
+roleblocking him/her;
+protecting him/her from two consecutive kills;
+discovering the action potentially made by the target;
+being unable to talk to each other for two consecutive nights.

*If the target had been Keeper Artemus, they would have been recruited both in the same time.

Captain Pearsall & Commissioner deNavan:

*Capt. Pearsall was naive: all investigations he made alone couldn't give another result than Innocent.

*As said above, if Capt. Pearsall had been recruited by Keeper Artemus, he would have lost his naivety, being a normal cop.

*If they had both targeted the same person, Capt. Pearsall naivety wouldn't have worked.

*If they had both targeted a Godfather (Lord Donal or Constantine), they would have got a Guilty result.

*If they had both targeted Keeper Artemus, one of them would have been randomly recruited.

Garrett:

*He would have got the following things from the following kinds of players:
+City watchmen, guards, Downwinder goons, Constantine: GOLD;
+Zeldos, Pagans, Archmage Kreos, Ramirez: GEMS;
+Hammerites, Artemus, Constantine, Lord Donal: ART.

*Which means that stealing from Constantine would have provided Garrett the three kinds of loot.

Totes guessed that garrett mechanism.

I think I said it in the thread?

ADDITIONAL AND PERSONNAL COMMENTS

*First of all, I will admit my unforgivable mistake: I should have considered a mechanism to allow the Pagans to survive if one of them died, like hiding the alignment once dead, or something like that. I'm really sorry for Tanks and Rot, I recognize it was unfair, and it was something I didn't think about. Again, my apologies.

*I'm also very satisfied with our 3 newbies, Dark_Reign, BF_Tanks and Excelsior. You played rather well and I encourage you to play more games, your strategies and ways of playing were good in my opinion. Dark_Reign above all played as I expected a survivor (or even SK!) to play, that is to say making his own way, just in order to avoid being killed or caught, annoying the town a little (he killed your doctor and blocked your mason!)... It was pleasant to see. I just don't understand why he claimed almost fully his role, when he should have lied in order to save his back. That's the only point I find too bad, but good game anyway!

*As for CarolKarine: you can say whatever you want Mole, but no, I'll never admit I made a mistake. The only basis you have to say Ramirez is not what I said he is is a simple wikia, made by fans, not Looking Glass' team. Anyway, Thief is a game that works like this, with cryptic and equivocal facts, which is perfect for fan designers such as me. We had a different interpetation, that's all. Not you more than me is true about what Ramirez' job is.

And anyway, it's something that must be said, CK had a weak defense: he didn't post that frequentely, and worst, the town lynched him for nothing, that is for flavour! If there is something I thought all Mafia players were supposed to know, it's that you must NEVER lynch a player for flavour. CK just had to say that, and I'm sure a lot of players wouldn't have let him lynched. You did it simply by listening to Thymole, although I think you also wanted the day to end since there wasn't night yet and thus little to discuss. That's fine, but remember that some hosts enjoy putting difficulty (which is normal, or else the game wouldn't be fun); see Rot's games where the main character is sometimes evil. I'm such a host, so now, you'll remember you must be cautious when you sign up!

*For the Zeldos: I indeed invented them. The flavour I sent to Blatant and Slarti roughly summarizes who they are. Since some months, I'm creating a Fan mission for Thief including them (if you wish to know everything, I already wrote some texts about them and did their textures and voices too). So yes, they didn't appear anywhere on the Web since no one apart from me and my brother are informed about the FM we're creating together, but anyway, again, you cannot say someone to be innocent or guilty based on their flavour. Yeah, that may sound wicked, but, hey, it's a game, with few rules, moreover!

*I think only few of you understood the point of having partners: having a partner means playing WITH your partner, it's not solely playing while knowing another guy like you has the same alignment than you. The goal was to work with your partner in order to benefit from advantages AND to get rid of your disadvantages (these numerous %s for example). Only Popey and Dead_End did that (Excelsior lately wished to do it but Vox's stupid absence prevented him from doing it, too bad). The roleblockers and the guards didn't work together, while you were explicitly told you would gain more by acting together while acting alone was dangerous. Rather than to target one person but being sure the person targeted would be affected by your action (while you could have some good surprises), you rather prefered targetting more people while taking the risk to be unffective or worst to put yourself in a dangerous situation. You're lucky you hadn't hard luck many times (plus the Pagans dead too early), but if we had played the game another time, I'm not sure you would have won by playing solo like this, this time.

*For information: all random events actions were performed thanks to random.org.

*Inintially, I didn't intend to reveal your partners were from the same alignment than you (for Townies, obviously). I don't remember when that happened, but it's when one of you asked me that that I realized that not answering you would push you not to work with your partner, thinking he was scum while you were town. I found that would be too unfair, so I decided to answer everyone who asked their partner's alignment. That's again something I should have foreseen before, since it indeed gave a non-deserved advantage for the Town.

*I'm also a bit disappointed I had to be threatening for you to use your restrictions. It appeared to work well in the beginning of the game, but then you gave up completely, not even trying to make it appear a bit (except for some of you). I thought you would have enjoyed to use a special way of speaking, above all when I saw the success it had in Mithril's Alternate ID game. I know some of them were harder than other to use, but I didn't think it would have been so hard to alter some words for simple sentences. Next time, or I'll have to drop them, or I'll have to add a mechanism that would force you to use. But apart from that, I'm still happy you at least used them at the beginning and at the end.

*Overall, you all played well. The survivor made their own ways, which was finally a good strategy, and I'm also satisfied with the way I allocated them their powers. That helped them to survive, because in all games I've played, the survivor only had to be lucky to not die, while I wanted them to have powers to reach their goal. I know Dark_Reign rather looked like a SK role, but that was still funny to see how he acted!
The Downwinders also played well, although MK wasn't very active. For information, Scragins and Leif found their fakeclaims themselves, and rather used them good. They would have deserved to win too, but you townies also eventually played very well by guessing the good scum and trying to 'trust' the survivor rather than to use him as a scapegoat when you have little info about scums.

In short, I'm very satisfied with how the game went. I do think you were good players, with not too much aggressiveness between each other and a rather good activity. I'm sorry if I was long sometimes to declare night/day again, and for the mistakes I made, but remember it was my first game!
I hope I wasn't a ba(star)d moderator. Honestly, I enjoyed hosting this game, and I hope you enjoyed playing it, and will still enjoy playing when my turn to host a new game will come.
Thank you very much, guys!

[This message has been edited by fr steve (edited 05-05-2013 @ 12:11 PM).]

Oh, and as a bonus, here is what you surviving players came through :



Credits to my brother, who made some of the characters, put them in these places and took the screenshots.

*As for CarolKarine: you can say whatever you want Mole, but no, I'll never admit I made a mistake. The only basis you have to say Ramirez is not what I said he is is a simple wikia, made by fans, not Looking Glass' team. Anyway, Thief is a game that works like this, with cryptic and equivocal facts, which is perfect for fan designers such as me. We had a different interpetation, that's all. Not you more than me is true about what Ramirez' job is.

That's... a stretch. The wiki seems to have a LOT of evidence to define what a warden is... and not a lot for yours. But oh well...

That's also not the usual flavor argument. For all practical purposes, it should be safe to assume that the mod knows his stuff. If the player makes a claim that is contradictory to the real flavor (provided via the wiki provided via the host) it should arouse significant suspicion.

I don't really desire to argue this any further though. View it as you wish.

I think only few of you understood the point of having partners: having a partner means playing WITH your partner, it's not solely playing while knowing another guy like you has the same alignment than you. The goal was to work with your partner in order to benefit from advantages AND to get rid of your disadvantages (these numerous %s for example). Only Popey and Dead_End did that (Excelsior lately wished to do it but Vox's stupid absence prevented him from doing it, too bad). The roleblockers and the guards didn't work together, while you were explicitly told you would gain more by acting together while acting alone was dangerous. Rather than to target one person but being sure the person targeted would be affected by your action (while you could have some good surprises), you rather prefered targetting more people while taking the risk to be unffective or worst to put yourself in a dangerous situation. You're lucky you hadn't hard luck many times (plus the Pagans dead too early), but if we had played the game another time, I'm not sure you would have won by playing solo like this, this time.

Can you just clarify on what the advantage was for the roleblockers to work together? I'm still looking at it and I don't see any difference.

25% to succeed. 25% to fail together. 25% to fail alone. 25% to be unmasked.

It can be reasoned that if one of them fails alone, that the other succeeds. So, the odds of success are still 50%. Also, I don't see the problem with claimed town roleblockers from being unmasked.

Can you just clarify on what the advantage was for the roleblockers to work together? I'm still looking at it and I don't see any difference.

Because working alone gave a largest chance to fail (50% indeed), or a chance to be unmasked.

While blocking with your partner didn't mean you would have got two effective results, but you were then sure you would have a result while not being unmasked as well. For balance reasons, you see I couldn't give the town two non-flawed roleblockers, while the Mafia had none. That's why they had the choice to work together to have 100% chance to block someone, or to play separately, exposing them to 50% chance to fail and 25% chance to get caught.

Also, I don't see the problem with claimed town roleblockers from being unmasked.

Because they weren't supposed to claim, as for every player. You claim when you're forced by other players to do. Of course, once they claimed roleblocker, being unmasked become useless unless you don't trust their claims. The goal was to learn however if you were targeted by them. If for example Excelsior, that you rather trusted town, had learnt Slarti blocked him, thus preventing him from giving you a result, you could have mislynched Slarti as acting anti-town; and that's only one example.

Ok, I see that. Wording was a bit strange but its there.

I would see being unmasked as a townie as more of a benefit than a cost... However, the fact that it is in the role as a risk implies that being unmasked is bad. If being unmasked is bad then it serves to imply that the player is not town...

So in a weird sort of metagaming way, I guess that mechanic did accomplish its goal. Curious...

I have to say, congrats to Matt on not making himself a big enough threat to warrant lynching, although both the survivor roles here were piss-easy to win with if played correctly.

But credit where it's due, and I bet your role was a lot more fun than the usual vanilla survivor.

Sorry guys for being more of an annoyance than anything. About my absence, I just lurking to be honest. I was trying to find time to investigate the wiki thoroughly for a good fakeclaim. I should have requested a replacement, but I didn't want to force someone to jump into the middle of the game and then have to make a fakeclaim on the spot.

Anyway, I'll only play mafia from now on if I know I'll have the time instead of just the urge to play.

Also: I kinda knew Leif was scum from the very beginning T'was only when i replaced MK that it was confirmed.

I'm pretty sure my potential scummyness was pretty obvious after a while, but what about my behavior made you think I was scum from the very beginning? I thought my play and activity was decent for the first few pages of the game.

Comments about the game:

I found it enjoyable. I would have greatly appreciated a couple provided fakeclaims, but that's the host's choice, not mine. My main comment would be how the two mafia factions didn't have an equal possibility of victory. In a multiple mafia faction game, each mafia faction should have a roughly equal probability of winning.

[This message has been edited by Leif Ericson (edited 05-05-2013 @ 04:39 PM).]

From my perspective I found the actual events of the game do be quite balanced since we almost won. I think we would have won if DR used his kill once more instead of protecting himself and we managed a mislynch the next day.

I was surprised at the begging because Steve asked who had played Thief and none of the people that said they had were scum to help with fake claims.

The pairing would have been more fair if you didn't let all the town players apart from CK actively pair with someone, that they then knew to be town.

I thought the mafia did have fakeclaims. I also would suggest they get those...

My mafia mate and I were given post restrictions which made it painfully obvious who we were. We might as well have been Lovers, as our post restrictions ensured that if one of us died, both of us died. We were not made aware of the pairing system ahead of time, but since we were irrevocably paired anyway, we decided to try to take advantage of it. Why the mafia opted to shoot at me when I had contributed next to nothing as a result of my post restriction is beyond me, but it was bound to happen eventually. There weren't exactly any Pagans whatsoever present in TDP which could possibly construed as town. I'm honestly surprised no one brought that up on Day 1.

Pretty much the entire town had a partner. This made it incredibly easy to confirm the entire town. Add on top of this that the town also had a recruiting mason, and you get a recipe for an ultra super bloc. How either mafia was supposed to deal with this emerging town ultra super bloc is beyond me. I mean, remove the recruiting mason and the scum still would have a hard time, but then, on top of that, you have a recruiting mason? That the mafia survived as long as it did is surprising.

That would be because we spent two days lynching you and tanks.

That the mafia survived as long as it did is surprising.

I was surprised about that myself, especially how we escaped suspicion until the second or third day.